The Road to the Merger Part 2: The Founding Document

By the time the plane landed in Dallas, he had outlined general operating principles for the league including a basic profit-and-loss statement, estimates on equipment costs, and revenue from ticket sales.

He included cities to host teams, a schedule and a “split net gate 60% to home — with visitors having a choice of 40% or $35,000, whichever is larger.” Some of the cities he identified fell outside the NFL’s list of franchises bringing the game to a wider audience. At the time, the only professional football teams existed in the Northeast, Upper Midwest and California.

He included a college draft with each of his league’s teams having territorial rights for one player, then a 30-round draft. The cities in which he expected to have teams included, to no surprise, Houston and Denver, since he had heard that men there had an interest in owning a franchise, then Buffalo, New York, Los Angeles, and, of course, his hometown of Dallas.

And then, there was the idea of revenue sharing among member teams which perhaps, in the long view, would be the most remembered of the concepts he laid out in this document.

Excited now that he could shed what he considered an unfulfilling career as an employee of his father’s Hunt Oil company, Hunt was empowered to reach out to other prospective owners of franchises and make his dreams a reality.